hypomania:
when it feels good: The swing seems to begin with disrupted sleep — or is it the other way around? When I was 21 I stayed up long nights after long nights, and spent days enmeshed in grand ideas while scorning the idea of rest.
I feel a pleasurable amount of energy or sense of wired irritability, the sense that someone has taped my eyes open and given me an injection to keep me awake—a ridiculous display of hyperactivity. My body simply can’t stop. Things seem clear, profound, dramatic.
Restless but focused, capable, clearheaded and smiling, despite having slept less than 10 hours the last four days combined. When I wake up I feel briefly miserable but it passes in moments. I snap at my mom when she asks if I’m “having an episode”. No, I say, I am not. Coffee makes me euphoric. I am not out of control. To the contrary, I am perfectly in control: a beautifully-functioning human being, much more talkative than most but not engaging in anything overtly dangerous.
I find myself hilarious. I form witty dialogues in my head and use them aloud, making everyone me laugh; their appreciation washes me in a beautiful sense of well-being.
I always feel witty, more attractive than I actually am. Aches and pains vanish. There is so much going on around me and the world seems profoundly beautiful, much mores than it ever has before. My body feels as if it’s buzzing with pleasure. I have the perfect amount of energy; I am awake, present, and euphoric. Everything makes me laugh and I have to comment on it all. I seek out customers at work almost as if I’m being pressured to do so. I have so many ideas; I am constantly planning things out in my head and carry them around with me, desperately, all day until I can tell a parent or a friend, because the concept seems vitally important for some strange intangible reason. I do not need to eat, or to sleep; hunger is an afterthought or disappears altogether. and I keep thinking about Alaska. Alaska, Alaska, Alaska. Life is full of an unseen beauty.
when it feels bad: I am irritable, uncomfortable in my own skin, wide awake and fully aware of everything that is going on around me. within me there is a certain thread of distress, although I don’t know where it’s coming from. I am impressed that i’ve been awake for the extent of time that I have and/or I try and fall asleep and wake up after less than a half hour, my body coursing with energy or my heart pounding. When I’m not irritable I make plans, particularly volunteering ones. I cry over videos of abused animals. I have ridiculous ideas, like that I’m going to go to Alaska, and am searching for tickets because it seems like a GREAT idea. I have a restless energy but no pleasurable sense of elation. I do talk—a LOT. and I talk over people. my thoughts come hard and fast and they feel more important than everyone else’s. I decide to change my major to biology (what the hell was I thinking?). When I lay down and close my eyes after hours upon hours of consciousness I know that there is no point. my insomnia is past insomnia: something has plunged my whole self into wakefulness. I jump back up, go back onto the computer and search for plane tickets. I feel good but also worry that my brain may go out of control. when I go out with my friends I drink a good deal of vodka because I know it will make me pass out, but instead it just makes my thoughts more poignant, pressed and elusive. two, three hours of sleep and I am awake again, searching for something that i’ll never find. I do not surround myself with people—I know that my talking will drive them up the wall. I ensconce myself in a castle of my own mind. After a few days of my sleep having vanished entirely, I feel vaguely like a prisoner.
true mania:
What was before a sense of pleasure, sureness and occasional euphoria has morphed into utter rapture.
Words can’t describe it: boundlessness, expansiveness, fullness. I am sublime. I realize I feel differently as I walk from the break room back to work—everything around me is so bright that it’s painful and I feel like the world is light as air. I feel as if I have wings; I am propelled, thrumming with energy and a euphoria beyond euphoria. It is at last ten times the sense of elation I had when I was given Dilaudid in the hospital. it is beyond that and more.
I instantly feel pity for those who have to shoot up amphetamines to feel like this—and at one point I almost feeling like crying, as if I’m touching dimensions that were previously hidden from me. Around me the world unfolds with a painless precision. I find that my previously shortened attention rate is almost gone; I flicker from thing to thing, aimless, but unable to stop the compulsion.
I have an uncomfortable amount of energy within me now. It causes me physical pain to stand still for longer than a few seconds. When a coworker comes to talk to me, I get the impression that she believes I’m on cocaine. I begin to talk too fast, to laugh too much—I can only realize this looking back. People begin to look at me strangely and ask me to repeat things. They can’t keep up with the perfect stream of my mind.
Self-confidence is through the roof—actually, I am beyond self-confidence, as I am beyond everything else. people are miniscule, unimportant. I’m sure they are perfectly nice people, but they don’t matter right now. who cares what they think? I smile so fully at them because I have a secret that they don’t. I am touching something they will never get to touch. I try to explain these feelings to people that do matter, but they just give me looks of alarm. I probably sound crazy.
The world is cartwheeling, carouseling around me. The walls breathe. My senses are heightened to utter exactness. I can hear everything—a whisper off in a corner, a laugh to my right. I am one with nature, with everything. I feel everything, see everything, hear everything.
I drift, I waltz, I float... who knows? All I know is that I’m touching something previously untouchable, reached some unforeseen height. My thoughts are slippery, here one moment and gone the next, mere fragments. my life has a greater purpose than I thought. I can do anything; absolutely anything. I realize that if someone told me to jump off of a building because I could fly, I would do it.
I am driven towards others and it is almost painful. I must speak; and I DO speak, over them, interrupting them, stopping them. I must be in contact with people—I must! but they are too slow for me, and they frustrate me. When I speak they give me strange looks. But what I’m saying is making perfect sense.
Energy boundless, overflowing, in excess—words come perfectly to me at first but soon they are muddled, hurried, rushed. Thoughts are like stars. Everything makes sense; everything is connected. My brain is a perfect machine but it is getting out of control. Cannot stop moving. And yet I don’t care; I don’t acknowledge it. This is the most beautiful thing I have ever felt and will ever feel. it makes the joy of mere happiness feel muted and grey and drab. it is ecstasy, wild and pure and endless. I think that even true love pales before this feeling—this “feeling”, whatever it is. All I know is that I hold the world in my hand, and I don’t want to let go.